FMCSA Wireless Roadside Inspection Testing and Evaluation

The Wireless Roadside Inspection (WRI) safety research program for commercial motor vehicles (CMVs) is being conducted by the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) to determine whether conducting safety inspections of the driver, vehicle, and carrier while the truck or bus is moving will reduce at-risk behavior among commercial drivers and carriers and improve driver safety performance. Kentucky has been selected by FMCSA as one of three pilot stales for the WRI program. The Kentucky Transportation Center will work in close cooperation with FMCSA and the WRI project team to deploy, test, and support the evaluation of a prototype WRI system. For this test, Kentucky will make use of two systems that are being deployed with other finding: (I) an aLitomated screening system on a weigh station ramp (funded by FMCSA's PRISM Program) and (2) a "next-generation virtual weigh station" (funded by FMCSA's CVISN Program). Each of these systems will use optical character recognition (OCR) technologies (specifically, license plate readers and LJSDOT number readers) and radio frequency identification (RPID) to identify commercial vehicles and the companies for which they operate. This identification information will be used to facilitate the wireless roadside inspection. This will allow the WRI team to test and evaluate the technical and operational feasibility of conducting wireless roadside inspections using OCR and RFID technologies.